


Between Scylla and Charybdis

by aurilly



Category: Atlantis (UK TV)
Genre: Dimension Travel, Friendship, Greek Mythology - Freeform, Idiots in Love, M/M, Post-Canon, Quests, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-08 23:33:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5517230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurilly/pseuds/aurilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No one expected a stag do in Cornwall to be the answer to everyone’s secret angst. Well, Cassandra probably expected it, but that’s kind of her job.</p><p>AKA The boys find themselves in Jason's world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Between Scylla and Charybdis

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aestivali](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aestivali/gifts).



> Many thanks to perdiccas, as always!

Pythagoras’s meagre arm muscles threatened to give way, which was all he needed on top of his churning stomach. He’d barely made it through his shift at the oars. Luckily, Icarus had come down to help him. Through the use of a machine that he remembered from his father’s workshop, and which Pythagoras had excitedly improved with some ideas of his own, Icarus had finished his own tasks in only half the expected time. Now, Pythagoras leaned on him a bit as they made their way to sit with the others.

The deck of the ship was not very big. Nor was it very tidy. There was no crew but the six of them, and none of them—especially not the Queen and the Oracle—had any experience scrubbing floors, much less one that fish sometimes flopped onto in rough waters. However, the deck, no matter how disgusting, was the only place they had to hold the regular meetings that punctuated the days—and nights—of grueling work.

Pythagoras had accompanied Jason on numerous quests in their time together, and had managed them with relatively good cheer, despite his lack of physical prowess. But this one took place at sea. And Pythagoras hated the sea, he was learning. At this point, he would have given his right arm for a good, hard piece of dirt in the forest. 

Hercules, by contrast, was having a grand time. He fancied himself something of a sailor (Pythagoras knew it was because it meant he could sun himself on the deck for most of the day while the others toiled). He kept one hand on the captain’s wheel and the other on the dried sausage he was eating while the group sat around him to discuss the next stage of their journey. 

There were things to do, it seemed, before even reaching Colchis.

“I have seen that we will need a vial of water from the River Lethe,” Cassandra informed them. “Only with that in hand can Jason pass the first of the tests.”

“A vial of water?” Jason said. “That sounds simple enough.”

“Simple?” Hercules scoffed. “Are you mad? If you knew anything about the River Lethe, you’d never say that. Really, Jason, your ignorance never ceases to amaze.”

Pythagoras noticed Cassandra and Icarus glancing at one another during this exchange, but he thought little of it. They were always glancing at one another, sharing private jokes. He was happy to see Icarus feeling comfortable around at least one of the company. Crushing guilt that everyone had tried to tell him to get over had so far prevented him from becoming friendly with the others; he mostly did his tasks as quickly as possible, tried to help anyone else with theirs, and fretted over Pythagoras with heartbreakingly remorseful eyes. He avoided Jason’s gaze and still called Ariadne “Your Majesty” despite repeated pleas to stop.

“The River Lethe flows through the caves on the island of dreams,” Pythagoras patiently explained to Jason, as he always did when Hercules’s outrage at their friend’s admittedly bizarre ignorance stalled the conversation. “The gates that lead to the caves are guarded by two fearsome beasts. They appear to unwanted visitors as their own personal worst nightmares and fears, driving them to madness and suicide before they can enter.”

“So, as you see,” Ariadne sighed, looking at Jason, “not quite so simple.”

“It gets worse,” Pythagoras added with a grimace, and then a gag when the ship lurched even more nauseatingly that usual. He felt Icarus’s hand come to rest on his back, rubbing in unhelpful circles. “There is only one route to the Island of Dreams. We are less than a day’s sail from it, in fact, if my calculations are correct.”

“Have your calculations ever _not_ been correct?” Jason asked with a smile. “So we are close by. I don’t see the difficulty.”

“There is only one route to the Island of Dreams. We must pass through the Strait of Messina.”

“The Strait of Messina?” Hercules exclaimed. “You must be mad.”

“Why?” Jason asked.

“The Strait of Messina is guarded on one side by Scylla, a monster that reaches down from the cliff-side and plucks men from their ships. And on the other side is a whirlpool, Charybdis, which sucks ships into oblivion. The channel is scarcely wide enough to allow a middle passage, so travelers must choose which to face. The gods demand a sacrifice to one or the other of these perils as payment for passage.”

“You have a plan, though, don’t you Pythagoras?” Ariadne asked hopefully. “You always have a plan.”

“Well…” he began, but in truth, he did not. Or at least, not yet. And he never would if he continued on like this, too ill to think. The moment he took to will the contents of his stomach back down left an opening for Hercules to get his oar in, metaphorically speaking.

“He doesn’t have a plan. I can see it on his green face. The more we learn, the more impossible this quest appears. If I’ve said it before, I’ve said it a thousand times...”

“You have,” Jason tried to interrupt, but it was no use. 

“Let Pasiphae have Atlantis, if she wants it so badly,” Hercules continued. “We have a ship. There are a thousand islands we could visit other than ones guarded by monsters and witches. Islands where the wine flows freely and the pies are cheap. I say let us grow beards and seek our fortunes elsewhere.”

“And what are Cassandra and I to do, Hercules?” Ariadne snapped. “Even if I could ever abandon my people to suffer under Pasiphae’s rule, we cannot grow beards.”

“I don’t know about you. I’ll have to think more on that. But Cassandra here is already bald. She needs only to wear trousers instead of that get-up, and her problems will be solved.”

Cassandra leveled her best ‘I am reading a terrible fate for you’ frown at him. Her naturally sweet face couldn’t quite manage it, though, and she simply looked put out.

“I believe our best chances lies with Scylla,” Icarus announced. He had not spoken during the entire council so far. In fact, although he had been the one to hire the ship and procure the supplies, through connections and friendships with captains and merchants, he had contributed but rarely to their meetings in the week since they had set sail. And it was a shame that his, well, shame, had kept him so shy, for he had always been full of good ideas; it was one of the many things that had first impressed and then endeared him to Pythagoras, years ago now, when they’d first met.

However, it might have been well for him to have continued to remain silent this time, because Hercules scoffed at him. “And what on earth makes you so certain this is the best course of action?”

“Call it a hunch,” Icarus replied, with the sly seriousness that Pythagoras alone understood to mean there was more to his statement than had been voiced.

“Icarus?” Pythagoras asked, hoping to draw out whatever lay underneath his words.

Hercules interrupted. “No offense, Icarus, but if we are to decide merely on hunches, I’d much rather go with the Oracle’s than with yours.”

Icarus’s face perceptively fell. Pythagoras was about to rally to his side, but Cassandra got there first, and with the authority the group was looking for, even though she was the youngest. 

“I agree with Icarus,” she slowly replied, never taking her solemn eyes off her unlikely new friend.

“We should try to steer towards the middle of the channel, but veer towards the Sicilian coast when the time comes,” Icarus said. 

It was enough of a decision for Jason, who turned to Icarus and Ariadne and began thinking through the sailing stratagems. 

“We shall be picked off like insects, and chewed into bits,” Hercules grumbled to anyone who would listen, which, as usual, was only Pythagoras. “You know the tales of this channel, of the Scylla. Six scaly arms, reaching out to devour men whole.”

“Arms cannot devour,” Pythagoras pointed out, with a failed and brittle effort at optimistic cheer.

“Fine, to lift us to its great mouth, then, or fling us into the whirlpool. Either way, we shall be dead.”

“Not if we prepare ourselves,” Pythagoras replied. 

“Oh, so you do have a plan, after all? I confess, I was disappointed it took you so long. I was beginning to think being in love had made you slow. All your brains seeping out through your—”

“Hercules!” Pythagoras was almost glad of his painful sunburn, for it meant the flush could not be seen on his cheeks.

“I can assure you, they haven’t,” Icarus said softly behind them, but by the time Pythagoras turned to frown at him, he had gone back to talking to Cassandra.

“What do you think, Pythagoras?” Jason asked.

Not wanting to let his friend down, and also wanting to think about anything other than the disappointment Hercules’s comment had churned up, Pythagoras set his mind to work. 

“We wait until dark to traverse the passage so that the monster does not immediately note our presence,” he said a few minutes later. With a falsely sunny smile, he reached into one of the crates nearby and pulled out a few knots of rope. “And, in case it senses us somehow, we will bind ourselves to the deck. We cannot be plucked off, and we will still have the ability to sail the ship.”

Ariadne brightened. “That should work.”

“Provided the monster isn’t strong enough to break the bonds,” Hercules grumbled. But there was no better plan to be had, and he knew it.

By the time the route had been calculated and the plans had been set, night had fallen. Cassandra enjoyed the darkness and the quiet; she always volunteered to take responsibility for the ship so the others could sleep. Pythagoras went below to the windowless cabin he and Icarus shared, to the cupboard where none of the acts Hercules had insinuated were taking place. Shutting the door behind him, he rounded on Icarus, who was already lying in his hammock, but not asleep, for once. The light from the single, flickering candle showed a frighteningly determined expression on Icarus’s face that quickly relaxed as soon as he saw Pythagoras.

“There you are! I’ve been waiting for you,” Icarus said. 

Icarus’s brittle, false cheer strongly resembled Pythagoras’s own from earlier. They had been friends for so long that it was impossible to say which one had unconsciously copied it from the other.

“You are plotting something,” Pythagoras said. “I know you too well.”

Icarus leaned over to tug gently on Pythagoras’s wrist. He suggested rather than pulled him closer, until Pythagoras was standing over him, and then climbing, first one knee, and then the other, on top of him.

The swaying of the hammock on top of the swaying of the ship only made Pythagoras feel worse, no matter how warm Icarus’s arms were. He wriggled free a moment later to sit on the floor, his back to the hard wooden wall, and his knees tucked under his chin.

Icarus sighed. “Shall I come down there with you?”

“No, I need a little space.” Pythagoras didn’t explain that the real reason was a fear of vomiting all over him. The mood had been destroyed—hadn’t even gotten a chance to build—and hardly needed further disgusting detail.

“If you say so.” Icarus rolled onto his back to stare at the ceiling, and an uncomfortably sad silence reigned.

What a mess.

On that last, frantic night in Atlantis, Pythagoras thought he had gotten everything he wanted—had wanted, seemingly hopelessly, for so long that he’d started trying not to want anymore—but it turned out he hadn’t, not really. For all that things had apparently ‘worked out’ between them (if you could call this terribly unsatisfying situation ‘worked out’), Pythagoras had hardly gotten any farther than that tentative and tear-stained kiss in the rubble. For pity’s sake, he’d barely even _seen_ Icarus, except in snatches during tasks, much less touched him. Pythagoras wanted to see more of him than the shadowed and abstracted slivers of skin allowed by the flickering candle. 

To make matters worse, the one night they’d actually spent in a port, in an inn on solid ground, had gone spectacularly badly. Things had started well, with kisses that grew more heated and touches that were more and more insistent. But things progressed, and fingers explored, resulting in Pythagoras wincing in discomfort, and Icarus shutting down in aggrieved remorse at the sight of it. No amount of reassurance from Pythagoras could shake him out of it. They’d given up hardly before they’d even tried, both of them too overcome by embarrassment to even speak of it since.

Hammocks couldn’t be cold, not when it was a hundred degrees below deck, but none of the things Hercules had assumed were happening in here. Pythagoras spent the precious few moments they had alone trying to keep the contents of his stomach. Adding more… complicated… movements—ones, no less, about which he felt even more sickeningly nervous—was right out. Add Icarus’s depressed mood, and... Yes, he supposed hammocks _could_ be cold. 

He fell asleep on the floor.

* * *

Pythagoras dreamed—so realistically that he felt almost sure it was no dream—of tender sentiments whispered into his ear and sad kisses peppered all over his face—more emphatic and tactile than anything Icarus had given him since that first night. 

However, when he woke, he was alone.

And, as he realized when he tried to rise, he was restrained.

His ankles had been tied to somewhere along the wall. Pythagoras strained against the bonds before finally remembering the knife in his pack. While he sawed back and forth at the rope, he wondered what this din was—an unholy, high-pitched wailing that threatened to split his eardrums.

Once he was free, he dashed out of the cabin and collided into Jason and Ariadne.

“Who tied me up?” he asked them.

“Must have been whoever locked us in our room,” Jason said. “I only just broke down the door.”

“What is that awful screeching?” Ariadne asked.

Pythagoras divined the answer to her question by hearing another noise—a new one. The whirling of water so strong that it sounded like a flood.

“Charybdis,” he said. “We have arrived at the passage.”

“There you are!” Hercules caught up with them at the foot of the ladder leading up to the deck. “Which one of you locked me in my room?”

They were all there, had all been restrained and contained. All except…

“Oh, Icarus, what have you done?” Pythagoras whispered to himself, because even before his head cleared the deck, he could see in his mind exactly what had happened.

The reality was even worse than his fears. There was barely enough moonlight to make out more than shadows, but Pythagoras would know Icarus’s figure anywhere. Cassandra was serenely sailing the ship while Icarus stood on the prow. He was too busy staring at the sea into which he was about to jump to notice the enormous tentacle—as thick around as two of Hercules—making its way towards him. 

“Icarus, look behind you!” Ariadne shouted, just as Pythagoras began to run towards him. She moved quickly, but although her aim was good, the arrow was too small to do any damage.

Pythagoras threw himself over Icarus. He tripped—of course he did—and holding each other, they fell overboard, just out of reach of the enormous jaws that snapped at their heels. ( _Hercules was right, it does have teeth after all,_ he thought to himself.) They hit the waves with a painful splash, and it was some moments before Pythagoras got his head above water and his lungs clear enough to yell.

Somehow, Icarus, who was bobbing nearby, managed to steal Pythagoras’s words first.

“Have you lost your mind?” he sputtered. 

“Have _I_ lost my mind?” Pythagoras yelled back, in between slapping mouthfuls of saltwater. “What in the name of the gods are you doing?”

“My part!”

“And what part is that? Sacrificing yourself?”

“Yes, of course!”

“You do realize that was not the correct answer? What more must we do to make you understand we bear no ill will?”

“Pythagoras! Icarus!” Jason called from what sounded like not quite far away enough. 

The sea was cold, colder than usual in the whirlpool, and the whirling rendered any attempt at swimming futile. Pythagoras felt himself being sucked in deeper, crashing violently into Icarus in a tangle of limbs and hair and cloth. 

This was how they ended, he thought. The bright light some of the stories said preceded death blinded him.

At least he was ending with Icarus.

* * *

Pythagoras coughed up a mouthful of sand and saltwater. Wet sand ran through his fingers as he tried to clench for purchase. 

It must have been the next day, because, although the sun was obscured by rainclouds, it was still shining, instead of the moon, which Pythagoras had last seen. 

“Quick! Help me get him out of the water!” 

Pythagoras, still sprawled awkwardly in the surf, scrambled to his feet upon seeing Jason carrying Icarus out of the water and up the shore. Everything ached as he took in the drooped head and lifeless limbs. Not again, he thought, not again. 

Jason laid Icarus down on the sand and immediately went in for a kiss. 

“What in the world are you—” Pythagoras began.

“CPR,” Jason huffed in between bouts of snogging. 

“What?” These were merely letters to Pythagoras, not an explanation.

But the answer became obvious in a moment, once Pythagoras saw that Jason was also pumping on Icarus’s chest and clearing his air passage. Pythagoras knelt beside them, holding Icarus’s hand uselessly and praying to every god he could think of—even the minor ones.

Icarus soon sputtered to life, coughing salt water right into Jason’s mouth.

“Eugh!” Jason sat back on his heels and wiped his face.

Pythagoras practically sprawled on top of Icarus, suffocating him all over again with a full-body embrace, closer than they’d been since that unfortunate night in the inn, actually. “I don’t know whether to kiss you or to…”

“Whatever the second option is, I’m sure it’s the one I don’t want,” Icarus said once he’d shaken Pythagoras off and coughed the rest of the water out.

“Of all the idiotic, ill-conceived…” Pythagoras scolded. “Promise me you’ll never do that again.”

“I doubt I’ll have the opportunity to throw myself into a whirlpool again. But abstaining from idiocy entirely? I have no wish to lie to you in that way.” Looking around him, and evincing not nearly as much surprise to find himself alive as he did to see Jason and Pythagoras with him, he said, “You shouldn’t be here.”

“Why not?” Jason asked. “And where _is_ here?”

Only now that Icarus was awake again did Pythagoras spare a glance for his surroundings. They were on a cold and quiet beach, with tall structures stuck in every so many feet apart, and odd lights shining in the distance.

Icarus peered at Jason. “You really don’t know?”

“Why should he?” Pythagoras asked. “I don’t know where we are either. The ship is nowhere to be seen. Last I saw, cliffs surrounded us, but here, we sit on a long beach. Does that not strike you as strange?”

“There are people about, further up shore,” Icarus said carefully, still looking expectantly at Jason. “Perhaps we can ask them.”

They began to walk, but after a few steps Jason stopped short, so suddenly that Pythagoras collided painfully into his back. Icarus seemed to have expected this, and was right there to ease him back before he tripped.

“No,” Jason whispered to himself. “No no no, it can’t be.”

“What is it?” Pythagoras asked.

“We might not want to ask anything of strangers,” Jason began to say, with a tremor of nervousness that Pythagoras hadn’t heard from him since first they’d met. “Not before I’ve had a chance to—”

“Jason!” someone called.

A man approached them, wearing the strangest of clothes, and holding what looked like a thin brick to his face, for some reason. Upon seeing Jason, he lowered the brick and stuffed it into his trousers.

“Simon?” Jason gasped.

“There you are. We’ve been wondering if you missed your flight.”

“My flight?”

“Yeah, Ian said you were set to get back yesterday from your Greece trip, but no one’s heard from you.”

“…Yesterday?”

“Yeah. What is it? Broken record day?” Simon finally seemed to notice that Jason wasn’t alone, or that Pythagoras and Icarus were not merely passersby. He eyed them suspiciously, glancing up and down their sodden clothes. “What’s all this? It thought we were having a poker night for Steve, not a fancy dress party. Did you change the concept?”

“I…” Jason had been unable to get more than a word or two out thus far; something seemed to have shocked him into total stupidity.

Between the strangely dressed people, and farther along, the odd-looking buildings, Pythagoras had at first assumed they’d washed up in a backwater settlement that was, for some reason, not on his maps of the area. But Jason, who had never seemed to know anyone but Pythagoras and the people he’d introduced him to, knew this man—this stranger. This, he reasoned, must have been where Jason had spent his childhood.

If only Jason looked half as excited to share this with him as Pythagoras felt. Or excited at all. Instead, he looked as though he were going to be ill. 

(Pythagoras had recently become well-acquainted with the feeling.)

“Even if it is a fancy dress party,” Simon continued, “what are you got up as? And what are you doing in the drink with…?” He squinted at Icarus and Pythagoras.

“Hello, I’m Pythagoras.” Thinking it only polite to introduce himself, Pythagoras smiled widely and stuck out his hand.

Jason seemed to be trying to stop Icarus from also answering, for some reason that Pythagoras could not guess, but he was too slow.

“And I’m Icarus.”

Jason groaned just as Simon stared between them and burst into loud laughter. “Are you havin’ me on?”

“I beg your pardon?” Pythagoras asked.

“Pythagoras? The triangle guy?” Simon turned to Icarus. “And I bet you’re scared of flying.”

“Wh—what?”

“Where’d you pick up these nutters, Jason?”

“I beg your pardon,” Pythagoras said.

“In Atlantis, of course,” Icarus helpfully said.

“I thought you were going diving in Greece, not to a resort hotel,” Simon said.

“They’re only joking,” Jason said quickly. “I mean, no one’s _actually_ named Pythagoras and Icarus.”

“Why not?” Pythagoras asked, confused.

But Jason wasn’t paying much attention. He looked dazed. “You’re saying is Steve’s stag do is _tonight_?”

“Yeah,” Simon said. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten. You’re the one who planned it.”

“No, I haven’t forgotten. Of course not. I just… er.” Jason shook his head, splashing water about him like a wet dog. Then, slowly and with more of his usual determination, he said, “Come. Walk me back to the main road and catch me up on what I missed.”

“And you’ll tell me about your trip, yeah?”

“It… it wasn’t that interesting, to be honest.”

Simon dropped his unpleasant façade for a moment and put a comforting hand on Jason’s shoulder. “Didn’t find out what happened to your dad, did you?”

“No, I did. But I’ll... I’ll tell you some other time. First, tell me what’s been going on here. It feels like I’ve been gone for years.”

Jason and Simon walked a bit ahead of Pythagoras and Icarus. Simon spoke rapidly about things Pythagoras only half heard and didn’t understand at all. Something about an Arsenal and drawing and a cup. He seemed very excited about it all.

They walked up the beach and towards the strange lights and even stranger houses. The sand gave way to a hard, black substance lining the street. They began to see more and more people, dressed even more strangely than Simon. An old man balanced on a narrow two-wheeled vehicle whizzed by. 

Every turn and every new sight led them deeper into this dreamscape. Pythagoras felt almost as seasick as he had on the Argo.

And yet, neither Jason, nor even Icarus, seemed nearly as baffled as he was.

“What is going on?” he whispered to Icarus.

“I do not think it is my place to say,” Icarus hesitantly replied.

“Icarus…” Pythagoras put on his most pleading look, the one Icarus had never been able to resist.

“He comes from here,” Icarus finally said. “From this entirely other world that can only be reached by the permission of Neptune and the favor of the gods. A world that sits separate from our own. This is where Aeson hid Jason all those years ago, and where Jason lived before he returned to Atlantis.”

“An entirely other world? That doesn’t make any sense,” Pythagoras. “How did you come to such a far-fetched conclusion?”

“Cassandra told me.”

“I thought the Oracle was only allowed to tell stories that pertained to he who asks.”

“What do we have to talk about other than you lot? It isn’t as though she’s led a wide and exciting life, down in the bowels of the temple with no one but priests for company. She hasn’t seen any plays at all. I accidentally ruined the end of _Antigone_ for her the other day, never guessing she had not seen it.” Noticing Pythagoras’s crestfallen face, Icarus returned to the main topic, “Do not take it personally. He has told no one, as far as I can see. The previous Oracle told him not to. I am certain he would have told you, had he been able to.”

Pythagoras would not have guessed exactly this, but now that the possibility had been put in front of him, he could follow the logic. The more he thought about it, especially with the authority granted by Cassandra, the more he saw it as the truth. And that truth hurt. He could not tell which hurt more: that Jason had kept such a secret from him, or that he had not been clever enough to guess. 

“It has been clear from the start that he was from some very strange or isolated place, nor was his ignorance caused by being touched in the head, no matter how vociferously Hercules tried to convince me of it. So there had to be some other explanation. And yet… a whole other world?”

Simon had been taking his leave while Pythagoras and Icarus had been whispering. He waved goodbye, muttering “Nutters” under his breath as he walked away. Jason took a deep breath and looked very sheepish indeed as he turned back to them.

“I can explain,” he said.

* * *

Pythagoras’s elbows bored into his thighs as he leaned forward and rested his head in his hands. He kneaded his skull as he listened to this impossible—and moreover entirely unexpected—tale. He was actually more overwhelmed by the fact that that the man he’d come to think of as his true family had been hiding something of this enormity, than by the fact that he was walking in another world. Magic and portals and strange happenings he could deal with, and had been dealing with for some time; while interested by everything around him, he was more concerned with Jason’s secrets and Icarus’s apparent death wish.

Jason had led them to his home—his ‘flat’, he called it, even though it was up three flights of stairs, and therefore not flat on the ground at all. The shared house he lived in was only a few minutes’ walk from the shore, up a street eerily devoid of any merchants, and largely devoid of other people, too. Every so often, an enormous moving hulk of metal with a person or two inside would go by. Jason didn’t seem bothered by the “cars”, but told Pythagoras and Icarus to look “alive”, whatever that meant. Minute by minute of being here seemed to be bringing strange new phrases and vocabulary out of him—words that he must have known all along, but had kept to himself, Pythagoras realized with a pang.

Getting inside the building had involved talking to the door, for some reason, until it had bewilderingly buzzed in answer. But that was only the first barrier, as Jason had lacked the key to get inside his own rooms. He’d tried shouldering the door, and then kicking it, but either this door was made of very strong stuff, indeed, or the strength that had impressed all of Atlantis seemed to have left him. Pythagoras did remember Jason’s surprise in those first days at his own powers, as though he had never had them before. 

He was remembering quite a lot about those first few days, and feeling like a fool.

Icarus eventually picked the lock with a thin needle he pulled out of his bracelet, and Jason had sat them down on the large and scarily fluffy seat he called a “futon” to tell them the tale.

“And you never once thought to mention any of this?” Pythagoras asked when he’d finished.

“Other than Hercules complaining about my ignorance, it never came up.”

“And how were we to know the correct direction in which to make an inquiry? Especially when the truth was not one that any man could possibly discover?”

“I didn’t expect you to. Look, when I first arrived in Atlantis, I wanted to tell you, really I did. You had been so kind to me. You and Hercules. You deserved the truth. But the Oracle told me not to tell anyone, and soon… I don’t know. It was as if none of it mattered. Even if she hadn’t told me to… I began to wonder if and why I should. I felt at home with you, and with Hercules. I wanted to stay, to be one of you. I didn’t want you two look at me like some kind of freak, or worse, a lunatic.”

“I would not have thought you a lunatic. Hercules did, and I was the one to tell him to hush.”

“Even so. And after that, I started to forget. By the time King Minos died, I had almost forgotten this place entirely and begun to believe Hercules’s other theory, that I had been brought up by a mute hermit in a cave, and suffered a blow on the head that made me forget everything. And now here I am again.” Jason laughed, not very happily. “I am back and I’m supposed to go play poker with my mates like nothing’s ever happened.”

“What is poker?” Icarus asked, speaking for the first time since Jason had begun telling them the truth. He’d been sitting quietly on the floor—not liking the too-soft furnishings, his face had clearly said—this entire time, letting Pythagoras take it all in. Which made some sense, given that it was all much less of a surprise to him. But still…

“Of everything he’s just told us, that is all you have to ask?” But then Pythagoras paused, and then glanced at Jason, because, to be honest, the same question had been on his mind since their meeting with Simon; in some ways, he and Icarus were too similar. “What _is_ poker, by the way?”

“It’s a game. Like… it’s a sort of tavern gambling game. You play it with bits of paper that have numbers on it.”

“Numbers?” Pythagoras asked excitedly. This was the first detail about this world and Jason’s life here that he felt able to happily grasp. “Is it a game of mathematics?” 

“I suppose it does involve maths. Though I’ve never been clever enough to master how it works. I usually lose my shirt.”

“Is that why you hardly ever wear one?” Icarus deadpanned. 

“Hey!” Jason threw one of the cushions at Icarus’s head, which Icarus caught and quickly threw back. They grinned at one another.

Icarus’s little joke—almost the first he had cracked since leaving Atlantis, since joining their company—diffused some of the tension in the room. 

“But enough about me,” Jason said, as though an hour’s explanation could possibly be enough. “Tell me, Icarus. It seems you knew what lay through the whirlpool. Why did you want to come here?”

“Cassandra made me this from a bit of wood from the ship,” Icarus said, and showed them a crude amulet. “It functions similarly to your necklace, though she improved on it, she said. That is why we were able to keep our clothes. She says it will glow when my mission is completed and a portal would open to return me to Atlantis.”

“And what is that mission?” Jason asked.

“To procure a tool we will need for our coming adventures. I assume against the monsters that guard the river on the island to which we were journeying. But I do not know what exactly this tool might be. She couldn’t see it. She simply said to follow the adventure that was given me, and the way would become clear. And to find the shoes.”

“Well, the tools make sense, but shoes? I don’t understand how shoes come into it,” Jason said.

“I’d been coming to consider Cassandra more helpfully specific than the previous Oracle, but this is possibly the most nonsensical direction I’ve ever heard,” Pythagoras said.

Icarus shrugged. “She said that was all she could tell me, that the veil between the worlds was too thick for her to see more clearly. I hadn’t thought that far out, to be honest. I was more concerned with making it through the vortex and making sure the rest of you were safe. The last thing I wanted was for any one to follow me into any kind of danger. You must believe me,” he said, looking pleadingly at Pythagoras in particular.

“What must the others think?” Jason asked, and pulled at his hair in worry. “They’ll think we’ve drowned. And Ariadne…”

“Cassandra knows what happened,” Icarus said. “She will explain that we are all right.”

“For how long have you two been planning this?” Pythagoras asked, remembering all of their whispers and private looks. 

“And why you? I’m the one who’s from here. I’m the one who knows how things work,” Jason said. “Surely it made most sense for it to be me.”

“And what if you, the one on whom this entire quest rests, never returned? My father is still in Atlantis. I have reason to see it saved, just as much as the rest of you. But I am not royalty, like you, Jason, or Ariadne. Neither am I a genius like you, Pythagoras. Nor the chosen vessel of the gods, like Cassandra. I am disposable. If I were not to return, the quest could still continue. There may have been some other way that you could have found to acquire the fleece and defeat Pasiphae.”

“You are not disposable to me,” Pythagoras said, dismayed that Icarus could think such a thing, even for a second.

“Nor to any of us. Anyway, if these are the requirements, then I don’t see why Hercules couldn’t have done just as well,” Jason said.

“Cassandra lacked confidence in his ability to resist the temptations of this world.” 

Jason grunted. “Yeah, I can see that. He’d probably lose track of his mission at the first sight of a Big Mac.”

“A big what?” Pythagoras asked.

“It’s a… a kind of sandwich.” And seeing from their faces that this hardly helped, he added, “A thing you eat, with meat and bread and a sauce you make from tomatoes... You know, I haven’t thought about it in ages. I’d forgotten. But it’s as though… as though being here is bringing it all back.” A slow smile spread across Jason’s face, and he leaned back into his chair. He looked at home here, at home in a way that Pythagoras now began to fear Jason had never quite felt at home—in Atlantis, which was not Jason’s home, not when you counted in years.

“You know,” Jason continued, looking even more softly pleased, “I did put an awful lot of work into planning Steve’s stag do, and here I am, able to see how it turns out after all.” He brightened. “And as the host, I’m well within my rights to invite you. I told Simon you were friends I made in Greece, and all alone here in town.”

“We’ll need disguises,” Icarus said, pitifully trying and failing to mask his glee.

(Icarus had always loved disguises, one of the few over-complicating quirks that never failed to remind Pythagoras that Icarus, while otherwise quite practical, was indeed his father’s son.)

“You mean regular clothes?” Jason asked, confused. 

“Yes, I suppose they could be considered regular clothes from your perspective,” Icarus said, deflating, “but I prefer to think of them as disguises.”

“Whatever gets you going. Though… shouldn’t that be Pythagoras’s job?”

“What?” Pythagoras asked, having no idea what was being said, and suddenly understanding how Jason must have felt all those times in Atlantis.

“Nothing.”

* * *

Two hours and a fascinating (though mostly useless) crash course about local customs later, Jason led them down the street to a flat belonging to someone named Dominic. Jason introduced him and Icarus to his friends, who were all rather like Simon—a strange mix of gruff and self-deprecating, and full of phrases Pythagoras couldn’t begin to understand. Pythagoras wasn’t certain which one of the men in the gathering was Dominic; these men all looked and sounded the same to him—hearty fellows in what appeared to be a civilian uniform of uncomfortably heavy blue trousers. 

Pythagoras swam in the too-big shirt and overlong trousers that Jason had gotten out for him, and Icarus as well. The unaccustomed ‘pants’ chafed his nethers; he hadn’t understood Jason’s assertion that ‘going commando, as we do in Atlantis’ was simply not done here in England. But Jason had gone along with the strangeness of Atlantis with good cheer, and Pythagoras felt that he owed it to him to do the same here. 

And anyway, all that mattered to him was hearing the ‘we’ and feeling the accompanying relief that Jason still considered himself one of them.

“Stop worrying,” Icarus whispered during the first few minutes of the party. “It’ll be all right.”

They were standing awkwardly in a corner while Jason performed his duties as one of the hosts. 

Pythagoras hadn’t said anything, and had thought he was doing an excellent job of masking his fears, but Icarus knew him too well. 

“How do you know?” Pythagoras asked as strange man after strange man embraced Jason with greetings Pythagoras couldn’t make sense of. “How do you know it’ll be all right, that he’ll want to return with us? He could stay here and we could all fade away into a dream, like this place did before.”

“Even aside from the fact that he has a _wife_ … Look, you spent your entire youth in Samos, had a whole life and family there. But where is your home?”

“In Atlantis,” he said slowly. “With you and Hercules. And Jason, but…”

“But nothing. ‘And Jason’. That is all. It’s really quite simple. You worry too much.” 

“Apparently not enough, if I did not foresee your intention to throw yourself into the deep, and for what? To prove yourself?”

“To make it up to you. In the hope that…”

“That what?” Pythagoras pressed when Icarus trailed off.

“Things have not gone as I’d hoped. You and I… we are together every minute, and yet…”

“I know.”

“I cannot help but think that some part of you regrets your actions and see them now as the rash irrationalities of a heated moment, that you are still angry. And now you are stuck on a ship with me.”

Pythagoras was shocked. He’d known things were awkward, but he hadn’t realized he and Icarus had gotten quite this out of synch. He led him by the elbow outside to the balcony where they could talk in private. “Why on earth would you think that?”

“You sleep on the floor every night.”

“Because I have been ill.”

“That cannot be the only reason.”

“I tell you it is. I need you to believe me, Icarus, please. You’re the only one telling yourself otherwise, even in the face of the rest of us trying to show you that it’s all right. Have you really been thinking all this time that I regret anything? Having to leave Atlantis was painful, but things with you… this is the only bright spot in this awful and ongoing battle we are currently living through. This—you—this is the only thing I’ve really wanted for myself in years. I finally have it, so please stop throwing yourself away.”

“It is all I have wanted, too. But the other night, in the inn…”

“I have heard that it feels a little strange sometimes on the first try. You were the one who insisted on stopping. And honestly, I think we were doing something wrong, because I know it should be nicer than that. And it was, for the most part. The nicest thing that’s ever happened to me. But then you stopped before we could figure out how to proceed and make it perfect.”

“I would rather die before I hurt you. Especially again. I couldn't bear to see pain in your eyes and know that I was the cause.”

“Yes, that much is abundantly clear. So much so that you plotted to throw yourself into another world without telling me. Which you somehow didn’t think would hurt?”

“I thought if I could return, this time as a hero, you would think… I don’t know. I thought it would fix things.”

“I’d rather have you with me, as you are, than a hero. There is nothing to fix.”

“Do you mean it?” Icarus asked. “Truly?”

“You are a terrible idiot.”

Icarus chuckled, and finally— _finally_ —took Pythagoras’s hand, rubbing it between his fingers. “I thought you learned that years ago. It shouldn’t come as a surprise.”

Pythagoras leaned closer to Icarus, nuzzling his face a bit and smelling the sweet goop Jason had suggested they put in their hair while bathing in the room with the spring. “Not a surprise. More of a constant marvel. Look, if I want a hero, I already have Jason. I like variety.”

“If you have him for a hero, then what do you keep me around for?” Icarus asked, the familiar twinkle finally returning to his eye, after weeks of absence.

“Why don’t you show me?” Pythagoras answered, drawing closer.

Icarus hesitantly, but then with more confidence, cupped Pythagoras’s neck, easing their faces together for a kiss. They hadn’t kissed properly in what felt like years. They hadn’t kissed properly hardly at all, ever, in the few days since they’d first done so. The sensation was still novel, with Icarus’s soft lips pressing against Pythagoras’s, and his smart tongue swiping across them. Pythagoras moaned into it a little, and began walking Icarus back into the wall, pressing against him until he could feel everything through their thin shirts—the muscles of Icarus’s chest, the hipbones that bore into his own.

Their noses bumped ungraciously. Icarus laughed and drew Pythagoras ever closer, tugging on the loops at the top of his trousers. 

“I have dreamt of nothing but this,” Icarus whispered, breaking from the kiss to bite lightly at Pythagoras’s earlobe.

“As have I.” Pythagoras had been on land for hours, but right now, he felt dizzy all over again.

“There you two are. Ach!” Jason said, covering his eyes, but then peeping through them to catch Pythagoras and Icarus releasing one another. He smiled.

Icarus’s eyes were full of fondness. He squeezed Pythagoras’s arm. “I’m going to investigate what sort of drinks they have in this world,” he said, growing more and more excited with each word.

Pythagoras was glad one of them was enjoying himself. This world was equally strange to both of them, but Icarus seemed to relish this sort of adventure—with disguises, roles to play, exploring—more than Pythagoras, who, while he had never shirked from a challenge, preferred adventures requiring plans and clever strategies, inasmuch as he liked adventures at all.

“Glad to see you two have sorted things out,” Jason said, once Icarus had gone back inside. He handed Pythagoras a piece of white parchment. “I printed out the rules for you, in case you want to play. You know, I’m glad we’re back here. I’m glad I get to share this with you.”

“I don’t fit here at all.”

“You’re my best friend, Pythagoras. Which means that as much as I ever belonged here, so do you. I’m also glad we’re here for the others, too. I can’t stay, but that doesn’t mean all this was meaningless. I never got to say goodbye before. I won’t be able to this time either, not directly, but… I’m glad I’ll be able to make my peace, wrap some things up.”

“Will you miss it here?” Pythagoras asked, heaving yet another, and this time deeper, sigh of relief that there was no question of Jason’s commitment to Atlantis, to him. He silently vowed to let Icarus crow his ‘I told you so’s later.

“Sure. I’ll miss lots of things. Or I will if I can remember them this time. You’re the lucky one. You don’t even know all the good things there are to miss.”

Pythagoras mulled this over. “You know, two sources feed the River Lethe, both located on the Island of Dreams. The first is the Lake of Oblivion, which makes you forget everything you ever knew, in preparation for entrance into the Underworld. The other is the Lake of Remembrance, which brings back everything that has ever slipped from your mind. When we get back…”

“We just need to get past those monsters, but yeah, that’s an idea. I don’t know how I managed before you, Pythagoras. I love these guys, I do, but I never felt at home before I met you. And I certainly never knew anyone half so clever. Even Icarus—he’s cleverer than half the blokes here, though I’m only now seeing it. I don’t think he’s spoken as many words to me in the past week as he has in the past few hours. It’s nice getting to know him. Most people would have gone to pieces finding themselves in another world, but he’s in the best mood I’ve ever seen him in. Probably because you’re feeling better.”

“I had thought it was because he felt that he is contributing.”

Icarus returned with a glass in each hand and a broad grin on his face. He held one of them out to Pythagoras. “Anthony just showed me how to make gin and tonics.”

“It looks like water,” Pythagoras said, looking into the cup.

“It is so much more, my friend. Drink up.”

Jason stole a sip out of Pythagoras’s glass. His eyebrows shot up in surprise. “This is actually really good, especially for someone who’s never mixed a drink before.”

“Anthony says for my next one, we’ll try the side of a car. I didn’t quite understand what he meant, but I am sure it will be delicious.”

Pythagoras had thought he was taking this visit to another world in admirable stride, but Icarus seemed to have taken things a step further. 

“Oi!,” Simon yelled to the room. “Are we going to play or what?”

* * *

Two hours and three hundred quid later, Pythagoras couldn’t see what was so difficult about poker. It was a simple game of statistics and strategy. Honestly, it was an embarrassment that he was winning so handily. 

“Are you psychic or something?” Dominic asked with a groan as he pushed yet more money towards Pythagoras’s end of the table. 

“No, that would be a friend of mine,” he said, and tossed his full house to the dealer for shuffling.

“I’ve had just about enough of getting schooled,” Steve said. “Can we go to the pub soon?”

Steve was the man of the night, and his request was law, though the others seemed not unhappy for an excuse to stop bleeding money. While everyone else grumbled their way to their feet and chugged their drinks, Pythagoras went over to where Icarus stood, surrounded by the other guests who had been wise enough to avoid the gaming table.

What Icarus found to talk about with them, Pythagoras couldn’t even begin to guess, but Icarus had never had trouble making friends. 

“That was quite a showing, Py… I mean, Peter,” he said proudly when Pythagoras approached.

(Jason had picked out ridiculous names for them, saying that their own were too outlandish to use here, and had explained to Simon that before had been a joke. Icarus was delighted, but Jason had looked sheepish and guilty and nervous as he’d said it, which gave Pythagoras reason to believe there was something else he was still hiding, something even larger that there was no hope of cracking tonight.)

“Gary here says you’re quite the whiz at maths,” one of the men said, looking almost wistfully at Icarus. “He won’t shut up about you, actually. You’re a lucky fellow.”

Pythagoras smiled softly at Icarus. “I know.”

They hung towards the back of the group—well, as far back as Icarus’s new friends would let them—during the raucous walk to the pub.

“Can I have some of your winnings?” Icarus asked on the way.

“What could you possibly need to buy? Jason can get us anything we need.”

“Please, Pythagoras.”

“How much do you need?”

“As much as you can spare.”

Pythagoras reached into his pocket and handed the entire wad of cash to Icarus, who smoothed it into a tidy stack, as though he’d been handling this currency his whole life. He handed a few notes back to Pythagoras.

“I understand that it is considered polite for the winner to buy the first round. This ought to more than cover it. We’ll meet you at the pub in a few minutes,” Icarus said. 

“We?” Pythagoras asked, but Icarus had already taken off and around the corner with Trevor.

How many friends had he already made? Pythagoras wondered as they disappeared, whispering like conspirators.

He stuck his hands into his now empty pockets and watched Jason laughing at the front of the pack with his friends. He felt lonely and useless and nervous. This was all very well and good; he was glad Jason was getting to see his friends one last time, and he was glad to see Icarus behaving more like himself than he’d been in ages, but there was no _progress_. Pythagoras wanted to get the job done, to finish the quest and go _home_.

Though the idea of ‘home’ had slowly become almost as foreign as this world. Pythagoras missed the little house with the balcony. But if all went well, Jason and Ariadne would expect him and Hercules to move into the palace. Hercules would like nothing better, but Pythagoras wasn’t certain that was what he wanted. And Icarus… 

There was much to consider, and even more to do.

“You look worried,” Dominic said as they walked. “Too worried for a man who just wiped the floor with all of us. You should be celebrating, mate. Instead you look tired.”

“I haven’t been sleeping very well,” he replied honestly.

“Do you take anything?”

Pythagoras looked up at him, confused. “Take?”

“You know, something to knock you out. Me, I take a couple of antihistamines, though that isn’t really what they’re for. My mum’s on the serious stuff, Ambien and all that. She took one too many once and was out for almost a day. Had us worried.”

“Your mother took something that put her to sleep for an entire day?” he asked, brain whirring with possibilities.

“Yeah, the doc said it would have knocked out a horse. Another couple and it would have knocked out an elephant. She’d have been dead.”

Pythagoras thought of the beasts guarding the gates to the river. He thought of the dragon they would one day have to face that guarded the fleece itself. What if they could be put to sleep? The trick with the seaweed wouldn’t work on something of their size and strength, even if they could ever get close enough, but this… compounds from another world… This might do the trick. Perhaps if he could grind it up into the monsters’ food, or, if this thing were a liquid, slip it into the drinking water...

“Where can I get this… this Ambien?”

Dominic shrugged. “Boots, I suppose.”

Pythagoras didn’t know why he would find sleep inducers in shoes, and assumed there must be some hidden meaning. 

_Shoes._

Trying to mask his ignorance and his excitement and hopefully figure out the answer through context, he said, “Boots? And where…”

“‘The chemist. On your high street’,” Dominic sing-songed.

“What?”

“It’s the… you know, from the advert.” Seeing Pythagoras’s blank face, he quickly said, “Right, right, Jason said you two were weirdly sheltered, and didn’t know anything, and we weren’t to talk to you about myths.”

“Myths?”

“I’m not supposed to talk about it, am I? Anyway, the Boots is just around the corner from here. Down the road, and on your left.”

“Thank you. I appreciate it. If anyone asks, I’ll be right back, all right?” He handed Dominic some money and added, “Buy the first round, from me?”

“Sure,” Dominic said, as Pythagoras slipped away from the group.

* * *

Pythagoras took four loops around the blindingly bright and white store before he ascertained that what he sought was not on the many, many shelves full of wares (and such wares!). He yearned to inspect each one, but he had a mission, and that trumped his natural curiosity. He watched the movement patterns of the woman in the white coat standing behind the counter marked ‘pharmacy’. It took only a few minutes to notice that she only dispensed drugs to people who presented a slip of paper from a doctor that Pythagoras didn’t have. He had intended to procure the goods honestly, with the money he’d won, but it seemed as though there was no option open to him but theft.

It was for a good cause, he told himself. And it was hardly the first time he’d pinched something for Atlantis’s sake.

He waited until everyone’s back was turned, and the woman behind the counter had gone into what he assumed was a lavatory. Swiftly, he slipped through the partition and put on one of the white jackets hanging on the back of a door, so that the other customers would not notice his intrusion.

Disguises, after all. Icarus would be so pleased.

He’d watched long enough to have gleaned some idea of how the dispensary was organized. It was the work of only a moment to rifle through the shelves and find the big bottle marked Ambien. He grabbed two empty bottles that could fit into his pocket and filled them to the brim. 

He had shucked off the coat and strolled out of the store before anyone noticed, bumping into something only once on the way.

The first person he recognized upon entering the pub was Trevor, which hopefully meant that Icarus was back, too. He scanned the room and finally spotted Icarus, standing with Jason at the bar. Icarus beamed when he saw him and waved him over, practically spilling his ale in the process.

“There you are! Where did you run off to?” Jason asked, pausing in what looked like an explanation of the different brews on offer.

“I had an errand to run.” Pythagoras kissed the glob of white foam off of Icarus’s nose, and immediately regretted the action, because it had looked adorable there.

“Get a room,” someone nearby called, followed by a whistle from someone else.

“It would be my dearest wish,” Icarus loudly retorted, without any shame, and making Jason laugh.

“What would you like, Pythagoras?”

“Get him a scotch,” Icarus said, and when the bartender slid a small glass across the wood-topped bar, he explained, “They ferment it for years and years and years. We should take some back for Hercules. And perhaps a headscarf for Cassandra.”

“And something for Ariadne,” Jason added nervously. “I’ve never had to shop for a queen.”

“I’ll canvass for ideas,” Icarus said. “Discreetly, of course.”

Pythagoras was glad to see them getting on so well, but with each moment, they were getting farther and farther away from important matters. “Check the amulet,” he whispered.

“What for?” But Icarus did it anyway, discreetly pulling it out of his pocket. 

Sure enough, it was glowing. 

“But we’ve done nothing!” Jason said.

“You may have done nothing, but I have been quite busy. I believe I have what we need. The amulet confirms it.” He patted his bulging pockets. “How do you summon the way back?”

“She said to hold it in both hands, and to re-enter water, wherever I could find it.”

“The beach is nearby. We could go back the way we came,” Pythagoras suggested.

Jason looked sadly around. “Must we go right now? I’d like… If it’s possible, I’d like just one last night.”

“She didn’t say anything about a time limit. In fact, she told me to enjoy myself,” Icarus said. “Which probably means that _you_ should enjoy yourself. Go on.” Icarus pushed Jason lightly away. “You can talk to us all day when we’re back. Talk to them tonight.”

“Thanks.” Jason took his ale and made his way towards a clump of the other men.

“You two seem to be getting along well,” Pythagoras noted, as soon as Icarus had ordered him something.

“You know, I used to be rather jealous of him. I was in awe of him even more. Beloved by the queen, beloved by all the people, beloved by you especially… He got to live with you and see you every day. Atlantis’s great hero and only hope, touched by the gods, the rightful heir. But it turns out he’s really just one of the guys. A bit of an idiot, like me. Not nearly as serious as he’s always seemed.”

Things got less and less serious as the night wore on. Somewhere in there, Dominic led the entire bar in a rousing rendition of a song about a small town girl, living in a lonely world. At one point, Icarus taught Trevor and the rest of them some rousing tavern songs from Atlantis (without saying where he’d learned them, of course). Pythagoras greatly enjoyed a long conversation with Steve, a doctor-in-training, about breakthroughs in surgery. Jason flitted between them all, doling out hugs like it was his calling in life, and retiring every so often to a corner to make calls, to his bank and to places like that, he said, when Pythagoras asked.

When the pub eventually kicked the drunken lot of them out, they parted tearfully from the rest of the group, with back slaps and hugs and well wishes. Jason promised to meet them for brunch in the morning. Icarus dragged an enormous sack that had somehow come into possession—the result of his mysterious errand with Trevor, Pythagoras guessed—but refused to divulge its contents. They sang their way back to Jason’s, where Icarus fell on top of Pythagoras on the futon and held him tight, slobbering all over the back of his neck. Nothing had ever felt so disgustingly perfect. 

Pythagoras woke with a throbbing in his head and the afternoon sun blinding his eyes, but it was the nicest waking he’d ever had. He kissed Icarus awake, treasuring all the little grumbles. 

The door opened and Jason walked in, having been to brunch already, it seemed. Judging by the clock, he’d been out for quite some time.

“I’m ready,” he said solemnly.

“Are you certain?” Icarus said.

“Yeah, but first, I’d like to take you two out, around the village, get you some lunch and show you the place in the daylight. One last cup of coffee and a chocolate croissant. You’ll love it. Then let’s look for presents for the girls, and be on our way. Back home.”

* * *

The passage back was infinitely less traumatic—a mere jump off the pier at the end of town. When Pythagoras bobbed up again, warm, bright sunshine bathed him, and he could see an empty golden beach before him. And on it, some figures. He checked to see that Jason and Icarus were with him before swimming ashore. 

Up close, the figures revealed themselves to be those of their friends. Cassandra stood at the water’s edge shading her face with one hand as she waved them in with the other. Hercules and Ariadne stood just behind her, under a small olive tree, and rushed into the waves to help the three travelers out. The Argo was anchored an easy swim out in the water.

“Congratulations,” Cassandra said to Icarus, and kissed him on the cheek. 

“It didn’t go at all according to plan, though,” he said.

Her mouth quirked with a repressed smile, full of false innocence. “Did it not?”

“Took you long enough!” Hercules exclaimed, slapping Pythagoras on the back so hard that he fell over.

“How long has it been?” Jason asked.

“Only two days,” Cassandra said.

“I wish I could find the pattern to this time passage,” Pythagoras said. “It is truly fascinating. We would need a few more journeys, however, as two is hardly enough to analyze.”

“No thanks,” Hercules said. “I’d rather have everyone stay in one world than go through that again.”

“You told them?” Jason asked Cassandra, who nodded.

“Yes,” Ariadne said through pursed lips. “I can’t believe…”

“Let us go collect firewood,” Icarus whispered in Pythagoras’s ear. “A tempest is brewing, and although I am sure it will blow over soon, I would prefer to steer clear of it.” He nodded in Ariadne and Jason’s direction.

Seeing her lip quiver and Jason beginning to stammer, Pythagoras replied, “More like a hurricane. But you are right. Let us go.”

The two of them ran away just as Jason began to explain. He was glad to be away from that scene, even though he was certain it would be all right by the end of the day. 

Icarus was still dragging the huge bag. He’d dragged it from the bar, all the way to Jason’s, and now here.

“What do you have there?” he asked when they were out of earshot and sight of the group.

Icarus grinned and led Pythagoras by the hand to a shade-covered rock and unzipped a side pocket of the sack. “I confess, this is also why I wanted to get away. I have things to show you.”

“What are these?” Pythagoras asked as Icarus replaced his thin string bracelets with a circle of fuzzy cloth.

“To help your seasickness. The man in the Boots recommended them. Something about the pressure on a certain spot here doing the trick.” Icarus lined up the bead with the large vein on the underside of Pythagoras’s wrist. “And if it doesn’t work, he gave me some pills that should help.”

It took only a minute of puzzling and remembering some anatomy that he had learned for Pythagoras to guess at how it worked. So simple yet ingenious. “So that is where you went? To the Boots? I went there, too. I must have just missed you.”

“It seems that our thoughts led us to a similar place, as they so often have,” Icarus answered with a sly grin. “Though it seems our purchases differed somewhat.”

Pythagoras curiously unzipped the large compartment. He reached his other hand in and pulled out a tube. A quick scan of the container made it abundantly clear what the contents were meant for.

“Oh!”

Embarrassed, even though no one else was around to see, he quickly shoved the tube of lubricant back inside in the bag, taking note of exactly how many such tubes were in the large bag. It was… an impressive haul.

“How much did you get?” Pythagoras asked. He peeked again and gasped to discover that the large bag was entirely filled with the tubes. He felt increasingly warm as he tried to calculate exactly what it amounted to. “The key variable, of course, would be how much is needed per… use. Multiply that by—”

“The man with whom I exchanged the currency assured me that it was enough to keep a brothel in steady supply for a decade,” Icarus replied before Pythagoras had a chance to work out the equations.

“I see. That is… quite substantial. It sounds like it should more than suffice for our purposes.”

“I don’t know,” Icarus said, leaning forward to nip at Pythagoras’s nose and press against him. “I have always embraced a challenge.”


End file.
